at the very least
by scullyseviltwin
Summary: "I-" opens his mouth, closes it again, opens it to down the rest of his beer. "It's just hard to remember that this isn't… you know, for a long time, a long, long time I thought that this was it. You and me, that we'd… die at our desks."


It's because he doesn't know how to act like a normal human being. His finger hovers over her name and shivers as he decides whether to call. And he does, every time. Even as he shouts down his higher demons, even as he reminds himself that this hurts, like a sort of fucking agony, he let's the phone go to call and then it's her voice on the other end of the line.

"How about a drink though," he finds himself offering and wishes he could shove a fist down his throat and just _stop_ everything struggling to worm its way out. How about a drink, how about ten drinks, how about he just drowns himself in them.

She sighs and it sounds like she's on the other side of the goddamned world instead of just over the Williamsburg Bridge. Olivia Benson is roughly six miles away from him right in this moment; he could run that in under an hour (he thinks, he's not in that great of shape any more.) He could run to her right now if he wanted to, if he thought she would want that, if he thought it would get him anything other than a door slammed in his face.

No, they were never that. They're this, this tense silence, crackling tension and fear of emulsion. "One drink," it's like he's begging, but he keeps the keen out of his voice, wipes a sweaty palm over the wrinkles and crags of his face.

Maybe if he didn't just keep doing this to himself.

"It's never one drink," and it's the first thing she's spoken to him in ages and ages and his knees go a bit weak for it. Because she never says anything when he calls; they listen to each other breathe as though they're lost in some tenth grader's love poem. Or a fucking John Mayer song.

Elliot wonders: how the fuck did we get here, how the fuck did I end up here.

And he agrees to meet her at Emmets at seven; they'll occupy their old stools, they'll go drink for drink as though they haven't aged eons since they've last seen one another.

-

"That jacket has seen better days," her voice is crinkled at the edges, the chill from the February wind having seized her throat and mauled it a bit.

The quirk of a brow and he sends her a smile that looks easier than it is, "Hey, fuck you."

Elliot doesn't look at her for long, doesn't allow his eyes to hold and cloy on her familiar form. God, he wants to count the new lines around her eyes, her mouth, the back of her hand. He wants to relearn her, right now, immediately, but instead he smiles and tears his gaze away.

Murphy has been the bartender here since the dawn of time and he has a skill for recalling what his cops like. Two Rolling Rocks (a preference they both took to in the academy, cheap, does the trick) and a shot of Jameson. Olivia stares at the whiskey for a moment before dragging her gaze over to where Elliot's hands rest against the bar top.

The jukebox plays some standard Stones and they both lean in and listen and don't say anything for some time. It's not that they're waiting for the other to crack, it's just difficult to assemble everything that begs to be said in any coherent fashion. Still, it comes out like subterfuge. "We don't hug."

"No," Elliot answers simple enough. They don't touch, because it's every metaphor for powder keg he can imagine. Spark to tinder. And on and on, etcetera and everything.

Olivia knocks the shot back in a flash, he has to blink as his brain processes the movement. "I used to think," she says, pulling the back of a hand against her mouth. "Maybe back when I was green... sometimes, I would think, that I wanted us to be partners that hugged."

The times they've found themselves in one another's arms were all born of grief or adrenaline. Never a press of arms around torso for a birthday, a celebration, something so banal as a "Congratulations." Elliot knows enough for the both of them, that it would have taken the world to untwine them, get them to unravel and so they hadn't touched. They were partners that didn't hug.

Her beer is drained halfway with a few pulls and Elliot trips over himself to keep up. "It's weird, I know," and she laughs, a full, real laugh and he's warmed straight down to his toes. He's missed this, missed her, everything about how he feels when he's in her presence. And it's the guilt that wars with the contentment, it's the grief that faces down his momentary happiness. "How is. ...the security thing?"

"They let me carry a gun." Elliot gives Murphy a look as he sets down two more shots; no more. "Which is ridiculous because I'm pretty sure I'll never have to use it. It's a lot of corporate contracts and meetings and... shit I really don't want to deal with."

"Pays the bills," Olivia offers helpfully.

Elliot agrees. "Pays the bills."

They both nod, they both drink, they both stare straight ahead, making eye contact in the mirror that lines the wall. "So you wanted to... shoot the shit? Really uncomfortably?" She asks it as though it will serve to provide some sort of levity but it only manages to cause pain to streak across his face.

"I'm sorry."

A harsh breath passes through her nose and at least this is familiar; she's steeling herself. "For what?"

"Does it matter? Everything. I'm sorry for twelve years and all of that shit we went through and didn't have to. I'm sorry I couldn't... I can't be there, still." He fails in this remarkably; nothing comes out as it should. He shouldn't be so shocked, he was never particularly gifted at this sort of thing.

Olivia twirls her finger in the air for another shot, and she tosses back the one that's before her. "Oh that's perfect. You're so good with the self-flagellation."

"Self-flagellation." The word feels heavy and foreign on his tongue; he knows what it means, can't believe she said it. Because that's not an Olivia word, it's not an Olivia phrase, it's not part of Olivia vocabulary. That simple fact slams into the forefront of his mind, reminds him that they're so, so, different.

Can't help but have grown apart.

"Yeah," she knocks down her third shot and makes a hand motion that says 'I'm cut off.' "Anyway, is that what we're here for? I can't take the self-deprecation though..."

"What?"

She cracks an enormous smile and shakes her head at herself; god, she's still fucking beautiful. He's still firmly heels over head and lost with it. Time, as the saying goes, supposedly heals all wounds but not this one. It's gaping and raw and still just as painful as it had been ten years prior. "Nothing, I say that and then... what did I expect, really?"

Elliot says quietly, "Some things don't change."

Her smile turns softer. "Nope, some things don't." The smile they share is warm and terrifyingly familiar; he has to keep tethered to the bar, to the present, else he'll be transported back to a warehouse in Queens with a gun pressed to his temple, Olivia's eyes betraying every goddamned thing about her. 'A different time, different time,' he reminds himself a dozen times before he allows himself to drink again. 'Another _lifetime_.'

"You know, there were, I mean there are, there are, things I wanted to say." A bit of the label of his beer is pulling away from the bottle and Elliot helps it along. "Those things, that when you say them, you feel lighter. When you get them off of your chest."

Olivia blinks and then swipes a hand down the side of her neck. "Jesus, jesus christ, now?" But her voice is a resigned little ragged whisper and she tilts her face so she can see him. "Now?" Her pinky settles just below her earlobe and he watches entranced as her finger bounces against the back of her stud earring.

"Good a time as any," and he's resigned too.

"Or _not_," she whispers, drops a hand and grasps his knee so tightly. So tightly; nails and all through the denim of his jeans. "El..."

He keeps his bottom lip clenched tightly between rows of teeth as he spins his beer bottle on the lacquered bartop. "I-" opens his mouth, closes it again, opens it to down the rest of his beer. "It's just hard to remember that this isn't... you know, for a long time, a long, long time I thought that this was it. You and me, that we'd... die at our desks."

She nearly cracks a smile at that. "That you'd be the last thing I saw as my heart gave out and I face planted into a stack of ten eighty-eights."

And that does spur a laugh, a shocked, guttural thing that Olivia has no chance of reining in once she emits it. "God, god that sounds almost... nice."

Elliot smiles too, looks _right_ at her. "Right?"

The disc in the jukebox switches to Zepplin and Elliot listens for a while, the need to say _everything_ pressing at his throat. He doesn't have the will to tamp it down but he's not sure he has it in him to speak it all, either. "Just one of those things, I thought it was forever."

"You and I," Olivia says.

"Hmmm?"

"That you and I... would be a forever thing," she supplies and tilts back on the stool, glancing at him, sidelong. "That's... Elliot that is... fucked up."

His mouth twists into an expression of muted pain, of acceptance as his brows lift in acknowledgement and he places his debit card down on the bar to cover the tab. He's very, very aware at how fucked up it is, but they used to be good at that, too. At being completely and utterly fucked.

"But it's also," Olivia says, bringing an index finger to trace over the raised letters of the name on the card. "...nice."

Elliot blows a breath through his nose and _grins_ the smile of a man who can't help it, who is simultaneously seeing the sun and letting everything just _go_. "Right?"

Olivia sighs, leaves her hand on his knee. Her thumb brushes against the fabric and the motion claws at his heart. This is what he's wanted, this, all the time. Just the togetherness that he had with her, the companionship amidst the silences and the pain and the anger. Knowing that she knew every part of him, down to the most minute sliver; knowing that he was accepted, just as he was. But she's changed, he thinks, and that must mean so has he.

He has, hasn't he? Elliot can't really be sure; it's hard to be conclusive about something like that; he's never, ever been good at reading himself. Olivia's always been able to read him at a glance but he won't ask this of her, couldn't bear to see her sad eyes as she said, 'No, you haven't changed, not one bit.

Still, her thumb moves against him as she smiles through the words, "At least, at least we never hugged."

"At least," Elliot sighs, "There is that."


End file.
